stick

the sticks

The rural countryside, especially in a rustic or particularly unsophisticated area. Jane was sick of living in the sticks and dreamed of spending her life in New York City.What, are you embarrassed by your family from the sticks coming up to the big city to visit?

stick

1. n. a baseball bat. (Baseball.) He holds the stick up higher than most batters.

2. n. a pool cue. He drew the stick back slowly, sighted again, and gave the cue ball a sharp knock.

3. n. a golf club. These aren’t my sticks, and you aren’t my caddy. What’s going on around here?

4. n. the lever that controls the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the tail of an aircraft. The pilot pulled back on the stick, and the plane did nothing—being that he hadn’t even started the engine or anything. You pull back on the stick, which lowers the tail and raises the nose, and up you go.

5. n. a gearshift lever in a car. (see also stick shift.) I keep reaching for the stick in a car with automatic.

6. n. a drunkard. (Possibly from dipstick, shitstick, or swizzle-stick.) Get that stick out of here before he makes a mess.

7. n. a person’s legs. (Always plural.) He’s got good sticks under him, but he won’t use them.

8. and the sticksn. a rural or backwoods area. (Always with the in this sense and always plural.) You hear a lot about how things are in the sticks. They’re worse.

Dipping into his tobacco pocket, he thrust a loose handful of sticks into the ancient's hand and shoved the canoe adrift with no thought of how its helpless occupant would ever reach shore.

Three fives he found in all, and two sticks over; and thus, at the end of it, he possessed as definite a knowledge of the number of sticks as would be possessed by the average white man by means of the single number SEVENTEEN.

It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.

He takes off his long-flapped coat, and stands up in a long- flapped waistcoat, which Sir Roger de Coverley might have worn when it was new, picks out a stick, and is ready for Master Joe, who loses no time, but begins his old game, whack, whack, whack, trying to break down the old man's guard by sheer strength.

From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt end of a green cheque book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted.

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